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Pedro Gonçalves

Declining Support for Nationalists: Hard Times for Eastern Europe's EU Haters - SPIEGEL... - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...0,1518,628141,00.html

EU Poland Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus Eastern Europe European Parliament Lithuania Slovakia Bulgaria Libertas Declan Ganley

shared by Pedro Gonçalves on 03 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Today, opinion polls put support for Self-Defense at just three percent in the upcoming European parliamentary elections.
  • Five years on from the EU's big eastward expansion, there's not a single new member state where fierce critics of Brussels can expect good results in the EU election. In fact, they will be lucky to win enough votes to cross the five percent threshold needed to get seats in the EU parliament in Strasbourg.
  • In addition to Lepper, Poland's League of Polish Families has also slipped under the five percent mark in opinion polls.
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  • hings have quieted down at Prague Castle, Klaus's seat of office. The liberal-conservative Civic Democratic Party (ODS) he co-founded has broken ranks and recently voted in favor of the reform treaty. The president's euro-skepticism has pushed him to the periphery of the country's political scene.
  • His newly founded right-wing Party of Free Citizens (SSO) is expected to fare even worse in the European elections than Lepper's Self Defense.
  • Opinion polls have registered increasing enthusiasm for the EU in the new member states. According to a Eurobarometer survey, a majority of citizens in Poland, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania believe that accession to the EU brought their countries economic growth and democratic progress.
  • Poland's farmers -- Lepper's clientele -- used to be the problem children of the EU, but are now regarded as a source of stability. In 2007, 14.7 percent of Poles still worked in the farming sector, compared to just two percent in Germany. A few years ago the vast majority of them were vehemently opposed to the EU and feared that large swathes of Polish farmland would be bought up by Germans. But by 2008, three quarters of farmers already believed that Poland's agricultural sector had benefited from EU membership.
  • The EU cut €220 million in payments to Bulgaria and froze a further €340 million because Bulgaria was incapable of putting the money to effective use as a result of endemic corruption and bureaucratic inefficiency. But surprisingly, the ensuing public anger wasn't directed at Brussels but against their own politicians, who had led the country into the EU but weren't able to tap the EU's financial resources.
Argos Media

As Economic Turmoil Mounts, So Do Attacks on Hungary's Gypsies - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...27hungary.html

Eastern Europe Roma Hungary Czech Republic Slovakia Hungarian Guard

shared by Argos Media on 27 Apr 09 - Cached
  • Over the past year, at least seven Roma have been killed in Hungary, and Roma leaders have counted some 30 Molotov cocktail attacks against Roma homes, often accompanied by sprays of gunfire.
  • Experts on Roma issues describe an ever more aggressive atmosphere toward Roma in Hungary and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe, led by extreme right-wing parties, whose leaders are playing on old stereotypes of Roma as petty criminals and drains on social welfare systems at a time of rising economic and political turmoil. As unemployment rises, officials and Roma experts fear the attacks will only intensify.
  • In the Czech Republic, where radical right-wing demonstrators have clashed with the police as they tried to march through Roma neighborhoods, a small child and her parents were severely burned after assailants firebombed their home in the town of Vitkov this month. The police in Slovakia were caught on video recently tormenting six Roma boys they had arrested, forcing them to undress, hit and kiss one another.
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  • But nowhere has the violence reached the level it has in Hungary, spreading fear and intimidation through a Roma population of roughly 600,000. (Estimates vary widely in part because Roma say they are afraid to identify themselves in surveys.)
  • “In the past five years, attitudes toward Roma in many parts of Eastern Europe have hardened, and new extremists have started to use the Roma issue in a way that either they didn’t dare to or didn’t get an airing before,” said Michael Stewart, coordinator of the Europe-wide Roma Research Network.
  • The extreme-right party Jobbik has used the issue of what its leaders call “Gypsy crime” to rise in the polls to near the 5 percent threshold for seats in Hungary’s Parliament in next year’s election, which would be a first for the party. Opponents accuse the Hungarian Guard, the paramilitary group associated with the party, of staging marches and public meetings to stir up anti-Roma sentiment and to intimidate the local Roma population.
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